Colorado’s Arts Policy Framework
Strategies
For each of the Strategic Priorities, specific strategies or possible approaches were gleaned from the community on how we might advocate for change.
Priority 1: Arts Availability in Communities
Root the arts in local communities to enhance availability, accessibility, and awareness of the arts.
- Municipal-Arts Partnerships: Mutually beneficial relationships between local government and artists/cultural organizations are cultivated through promising practices for artist procurement, government roles/commissions for arts and culture, and local level programs to share funding and public art projects.
- Dedicated Arts Spaces: Independent and co-use spaces for arts creation, engagement, and purchasing are developed, protected, and affordable.
- Creative Information Hub: Information access for patrons and creative workers is improved through a centralized hub with an event calendar, resource directory, and a database of artists, as well as investment in community journalism.
- Reduced Barriers for Events: Local event costs are mitigated through reduced government fees, permit streamlining, and increased flexibility (i.e. CDOT fees, liquor licenses, zoning).
- Address Basic Needs for Arts Access: The arts will not be accessible to individuals who live and work in communities so long as their basic human needs are not met (i.e. cost of living, transportation, healthcare, food insecurity, digital access, workers rights). These issues should be identified by localities and addressed through cross-coalition advocacy.
Priority 1: Community and Individual Well-Being
Cultivate community and individual well-being, belonging, and connection to local heritage.
- Quality of Life and Mental Health: The arts are leveraged as a tool to support mental health including mitigating social issues, stress, and social isolation.
- Community Building: The arts build stronger networks and connections that cultivate belonging and collaboration across differences in communities.
- Community-Relevant Experiences: Creative endeavors are guided by local residents and prioritize the expression of locally underrepresented artists.
- Cultural Heritage Preservation: Buildings, land, and traditional arts practices representative of Colorado history are understood through long-term relationship building and preserved through funding and skill sharing.
Priority 2: Strategic Investment in the Creative Economy
Financially invest in and develop infrastructure for creative workers, businesses, and organizations, and the communities where they are located.
- Sustainable Funding and Grants: Funding for the ongoing work of artists, local arts initiatives, co-use spaces, maintenance costs, arts learning, creative workforce and infrastructure development, staffing costs, and more.
- Infrastructure Investment: Co-use and independent infrastructure development and preservation for arts creation, display, performance, and engagement.
- Economic Development and Planning: State and local entities are incentivized and trained to incorporate the arts into regional planning and economic development projects.
Priority 2: Creative Sector as an Economic Driver
Embed and elevate the creative sectors’ role in economic development and vital impact on business and tourism.
- Business and Tourism: Creative economy actors are at the table in decisions about and strategy for tourism, business, state/local development, and rural economy.
- Cross-Sector Collaboration: The creative sector is embedded into policy areas, sectors, and practices on the state and local level (i.e. science, technology, education, business, health, community development, transportation).
- Visibility and Promotion: The arts are publicly recognized as valuable and impactful through marketing campaigns, road signage, and coordinated financial support for marketing initiatives by localities and arts organizations.
- Creative Project Incentives: Creative industry incentives are long-term and stabilized and permitting processes are simplified to attract and retain creative sector projects (i.e. tax credits, intellectual property protection, streamlined permitting, creative enterprise guarantees, sales tax incentives).
Priority 3: Affordability for Creative Workers
Mitigate the issues of affordability impacting all Coloradans through cross-coalition advocacy that addresses the specialized needs of creative workers.
- Housing for Creatives: Creative workers are included in affordable housing plans to ensure they can live in the communities in which they work and meet basic needs.
- Creative Resources and Space: Publicly owned, low-cost, or resource sharing options for studio space, storage facilities, and medium diverse materials are accessible to creatives.
- Fair and Transparent Compensation: Fair and competitive salaried, hourly and contractual work is enabled through salary eligible grants, pay transparency policies, and artist fair pay guidelines.
- AI and Creative Rights: Artists’ livelihoods and skills are prioritized with protections for human-made work (i.e. ownership or attribution policies, transparent labeling, royalty systems, compensation funds).
Priority 3: Professional Support for Creatives
Cater relevant professional development for creatives that enhances capacity, business vitality, arts leadership and support networks.
- Individual Capacity Building: Artists have the skills and resources to manage finances, build a business, charge for services, and market themselves.
- Operational Skills: Creative industry leaders run organizations effectively with long-term financial strategies, community engagement, and strategic management.
- Cultivating Arts Leaders: New leaders in the arts are cultivated and receive equitable access to professional development resources, mentorships and sustainable positions.
- Networks of Support: Creative workers are connected and collaborate through collaborative grants, guilds, and communication networks.
- Equitable and Sustainable Arts Ecosystem: Arts organizations of varying sizes have the financial, spacial, and administrative resources necessary to ensure a sustainable ecosystem rich with opportunities for entering the field, skillbuilding, and growth.
Priority 4: PreK-12 Arts Learning
Expand, improve, mandate, and fund PreK-12 public arts programs to support student success, creative experiences, and creative workforce development in all schools.
- Requirements, Standards and Curriculum: Arts learning is required in education statutes, evaluated on performance frameworks, and incorporated cross-curricularly in Colorado public schools.
- Dedicated Funding: State-level dedicated funding for arts learning works to equalize arts access, address teacher wages, account for materials access, and expand CDE arts staff.
- Access and Impact Data Collection: Data from every school district is collected by the state to understand statewide availability, equity and impact of the arts.
- Teacher and Admin Training and Awareness: Diverse educators with specialized arts learning licensure are available to fulfill arts learning requirements and administrators are trained to understand how to scale and evaluate arts learning programs.
Priority 4: Lifelong Arts Learning
Enable and encourage arts learning for people of all ages and the exchange of creative skills to sustain arts practices and careers across generations.
- Out-of-School Learning: Out of school learning opportunities are available at low-no cost and include multilingual experiences that are culturally relevant and expand access to arts materials.
- Early Childhood, Adult, and Older Adult Learning: Programs for early childhood, adults, and older adults are more widely available and promote community cultural knowledge, connection to place, and skills sharing.
- Higher Education and Career Pathways: Career pathways for young professionals, training for future arts educators and teaching artists, and interdisciplinary learning across vocations.
- Apprenticeships and Cultural Preservation: Creative and cultural skills are preserved and shared through funded apprenticeship programs and workforce development in fine, cultural, and technical arts.
